Watching my language

I don’t know about you, but my spam filter has these settings. I like how I can prioritize the level of my own intolerance, while also guaging the kind of friend I have. Like, I know my friends will say adult things and probably be sexually explicit, which means of course that I expect to receive “special offers,” and why wouldn’t I want to get rich quick?

But “Racially Insensitive?” First of all, that means there’s a list somewhere that has all the common and not-so-common epithets available to us all. That’s got to be a hornet’s nest of it’s own. And what about the words themselves? Having a list of forbidden words means that any use of a slur is automatically a slur. There’s no room for context, for academic reference or for storytelling with realistic dialogue. So when I choose to have lax racial insensitivity settings, is that my way of saying, I am happy using offensive language? Are racists too stupid to find other ways to hate besides outright name-calling? And which is more odious: calling someone a name or denying them a living wage? Do racists have to go in and reset their spam filters so that they can communicate with their friends?